Watching People Watching

Last Christmas, while visiting my family back in the Fox Valley of Wisconsin, I attempted a short-lived and annoying (for the participants) experiment. I filmed their reactions to a Green Bay Packers-Chicago Bears football game, standing with my back towards the television screen and filming their faces as the match progressed. It was a bad day for the Packers. I've watched the results several times, and continue to be amazed at how odd the sensation is of watching people watch something else. My mother's animated histrionics and my grandfather's disgusted knee-slaps make up a huge part of the entertainment factor. But even my father's relatively calm responses - merely muttering "face mask" as he reaches for another slice of pizza - is somewhat interesting when viewed over the screen. As somebody who has never fallen for the game of football, it's perhaps not surprising that I would find my family's reactions to the game more interesting than the game itself. But I think it also says something about the art of watching - not quite voyeurism, but still something slightly transgressive.

I was reminded of this last night when a friend and I watched Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi's moody ghost story masterpiece from 1953. It was a second viewing for me, a first for my friend. But more importantly, it was also a first for my friend in experiencing any sort of older Japanese cinema. And throughout the movie, I caught myself wondering what it must be like to see something like an older film from a foreign culture for the first time. I remember how I responded to Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo in college - the rhythms of the Japanese language were so incredibly odd to me that I could barely keep up, while the exaggerated delivery styles and kabuki-derived acting also struck me as patently weird. Slowly, these once-odd attributes normalized, becoming almost familiar as my Japanese cinema credentials stacked up. And so while I could watch Ugetsu and reflect on the universality of the characters or marvel at the majestic slow pans across the landscape, was my friend struggling to understand the exotic textures of the traditional music which opens the film?

I've always been amazed at how perceptions of an object shift over time and between people, even as the object itself remains unchanged. Without any larger cultural understanding to latch onto, I'm not sure how much of an impression Ugetsu made upon my friend. I'm glad he was open to experiencing something new and potentially disorienting. The fact that we both took something very different away from the film is what keeps me enthralled with the artistic process.